100 best nonfiction books of all time
Robert McCrum's guide to the 100 greatest nonfiction books in English
A response to the 100 best nonfiction books list: ‘Some I agree with, some I’d add, and some I’d hoof right off the field’
The 100 best nonfiction books: No 100 – King James Bible: The Authorised Version (1611)
The 100 best nonfiction books of all time: the full list
How I chose my list of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time
The 100 best nonfiction books: No 99 – The History of the World by Walter Raleigh (1614)
Raleigh’s book, packed with veiled political advice and suppressed soon after publication, is a classic of late Renaissance history writing
The 100 best nonfiction books: No 98 – The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton (1621)
This compelling and occasionally comic study of melancholy became cult reading in the 17th century and has inspired artists from Keats to Cy Twombly
The 100 best nonfiction books: No 97 – The First Folio by William Shakespeare (1623)
The first edition of Shakespeare’s plays established the playwright for all time in a trove of some 36 plays with an assembled cast of immortal characters
The 100 best nonfiction books: No 96 – Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions by John Donne (1624)
The poet’s intense meditation on the meaning of life and death is a dazzling work that contains some of his most memorable writing
The 100 best nonfiction books: No 95 – Areopagitica by John Milton (1644)
Today Milton is remembered as a great poet. But this fiery attack on censorship and call for a free press reveals a brilliant English radical
The 100 best nonfiction books: No 94 – Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes (1651)
Thomas Hobbes’s essay on the social contract is both a founding text of western thought and a masterpiece of wit and imagination
The 100 best nonfiction books: No 93 – Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial, or A Brief Discourse of the Sepulchral Urns Lately Found in Norfolk (1658)
Sir Thomas Browne earned his reputation as a ‘writer’s writer’ with this dazzling short essay on burial customs
The 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time: No 92 – The Diary of Samuel Pepys (1660)
A portrait of an extraordinary Englishman, whose scintillating first-hand accounts of Restoration England are reported alongside his rampant sexual exploits
The 100 best nonfiction books: No 91 – The Book of Common Prayer (1662)
Thomas Cranmer’s book of vernacular English prayer is possibly the most widely read book in the English literary tradition
The 100 best nonfiction books: No 90 – An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke (1689)
Eloquent and influential, the Enlightenment philosopher’s most celebrated work embodies the English spirit and retains an enduring relevance
The 100 best nonfiction books: No 89 – A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain by Daniel Defoe (1727)
Readable, reliable, full of surprise and charm, Daniel Defoe’s Tour is an outstanding example of what has become an established literary genre
The 100 best nonfiction books: No 88 – A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift (1729)
The satirist’s jaw-dropping solution to the plight of the Irish poor is among the most powerful tracts in the English language
The 100 Best nonfiction books: No 87 - A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume (1739)
This is widely seen as philosopher David Hume’s most important work, but its first publication was a disaster
The 100 best nonfiction books: No 86 – A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson (1755)
Dr Johnson’s decade-long endeavour framed the English language for the coming centuries with clarity, intelligence and extraordinary wit
The 100 best nonfiction books: No 85 – Common Sense by Tom Paine (1776)
This little book helped ignite revolutionary America against the British under George III
100 best nonfiction books: No 84 – The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (1776)
Blending history, philosophy, psychology, and sociology, the Scottish intellectual single-handedly invented modern political economy
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